on appeal from the united states district court
for the eastern district of north carolina

[June 28, 1993]

Justice Stevens , dissenting.

These unarguable facts, which the Court devotes most
of its opinion to proving, give rise to three constitutional
questions: Does the Constitution impose a requirement of
contiguity or compactness on how the States may draw
their electoral districts? Does the Equal Protection Clause
prevent a State from drawing district boundaries for the
purpose of facilitating the election of a member of an
identifiable group of voters? And, finally, if the answer
to the second question is generally "No," should it be
different when the favored group is defined by race?
Since I have already written at length about these questions,
[n.1]
my negative answer to each can be brieflyexplained.

The first question is easy. There is no independent
constitutional requirement of compactness or contiguity,
and the Court's opinion (despite its many references to the
shape of District 12, see ante, at 3-4, 9, 10, 12-16) does
not suggest otherwise. The existence of bizarre and
uncouth district boundaries is powerful evidence of an
ulterior purpose behind the shaping of those boundaries--usually a purpose to advantage the political party
in control of the districting process. Such evidence will
always be useful in cases that lack other evidence of
invidious intent. In this case, however, we know what the
legislators' purpose was: The North Carolina Legislature
drew District 12 to include a majority of African American
voters. See ante, at 2-3, 17. Evidence of the district's
shape is therefore convincing, but it is also cumulative,
and, for our purposes, irrelevant.

As for the second question, I believe that the Equal
Protection Clause is violated when the State creates the
kind of uncouth district boundaries seen in Karcher v.
Daggett, 462 U.S. 725 (1983), Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960), and this case, for the sole purpose of
making it more difficult for members of a minority group
to win an election.
[n.2]
The duty to govern impartially isabused when a group with power over the electoral
process defines electoral boundaries solely to enhance its
own political strength at the expense of any weaker group.
That duty, however, is not violated when the majority acts
to facilitate the election of a member of a group that lacks
such power because it remains underrepresented in the
state legislature--whether that group is defined by political affiliation, by common economic interests, or by
religious, ethnic, or racial characteristics. The difference
between constitutional and unconstitutional gerrymanders
has nothing to do with whether they are based on assumptions about the groups they affect, but whether their
purpose is to enhance the power of the group in control
of the districting process at the expense of any minority
group, and thereby to strengthen the unequal distribution
of electoral power. When an assumption that people in
particular a minority group (whether they are defined by
the political party, religion, ethnic group, or race to which
they belong) will vote in a particular way is used to
benefit that group, no constitutional violation occurs.
Politicians have always relied on assumptions that people
in particular groups are likely to vote in a particular way
when they draw new district lines, and I cannot believe
that anything in today's opinion will stop them from doing
so in the future.
[n.3]

Finally, we must ask whether otherwise permissible
redistricting to benefit an underrepresented minority group
becomes impermissible when the minority group is defined
by its race. The Court today answers this question in the
affirmative, and its answer is wrong. If it is permissible
to draw boundaries to provide adequate representation for
rural voters, for union members, for Hasidic Jews, for
Polish Americans, or for Republicans, it necessarily follows
that it is permissible to do the same thing for members
of the very minority group whose history in the United
States gave birth to the Equal Protection Clause. See,
e.g., ante, at 7-9.
[n.4]
A contrary conclusion could only be
described as perverse.

2
See Karcher, 462 U. S., at 748 (Stevens, J., concurring) ("If they serve
no purpose other than to favor one segment--whether racial, ethnic,
religious, economic, or political--that may occupy a position of strength
at a particular point in time, or to disadvantage a politically weak
segment of the community, they violate the constitutional guarantee of
equal protection"); Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U. S., at 178-183, and
nn. 21-24 (Powell, J., joined by Stevens, J., concurring in part and
dissenting in part) (describing "grotesque gerrymandering" and "unusualshapes" drawn solely to deprive Democratic voters of electoral power).

3
The majority does not acknowledge that we require such a showing
from plaintiffs who bring a vote dilution claim under § 2 of the Voting
Rights Act. Under the three part test established by Thornburg v.
Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 50-51 (1986), a minority group must show that it
could constitute the majority in a single member district, "that it is
politically cohesive," and "that the white majority votes sufficiently as a
bloc to enable it . . . usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate."
At least the latter two of these three conditions depend on proving that
what the Court today brands as "impermissible racial stereotypes," ante,
at 16, are true. Because Gingles involved North Carolina, which the
Court admits has earlier established the existence of "pervasive racial blocvoting", ante, at 22, its citizens and legislators--as well as those from
other states--will no doubt be confused by the Court's requirement of
evidence in one type of case that the Constitution now prevents reliance
on in another. The Court offers them no explanation of this paradox.

4
The Court's opinion suggests that African Americans may now be the
only group to which it is unconstitutional to offer specific benefits from
redistricting. Not very long ago, of course, it was argued that minority
groups defined by race were the only groups the Equal Protection Clause
protected in this context. See Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55, 86-90, and
nn. 6-10 (1980) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment).